From pork to Prince to Project Runway.

Posts from January 2006

January 30, 2006

It seems as though I've read about Aztec Camera for years. In fact, one of my more vivid Aztec Camera associations is reading in my BMG Music monthly brochure about a new AC album, which, based on timing—it was around 1990, and I was about 13—must have been Stray.

Needless to say, the artisans at BMG weren't quite able to convince me to try out Roddy Frame's 90s semi-comeback album. After all, I was probably on the self-selected Hard Rock regimen, & then at the time, I probably stuck with Living Color, or EMF. Or something.

But so anyway, just last week I downloaded an Aztec Camera track. The track was "We Could Send Letters," and I listened to it for the first time yesterday afternoon, & it just fit, somehow.

& so this weekend I headed down to Amoeba and bought High Land, Hard Rain, the first Aztec Camera album. [1]

Anyway, for anyone else who's new to Aztec Camera, the (really short version of the) story: AC is largely just Roddy Frame, from Scotland, and High Land, Hard Rain, released in 1983 (when Roddy was just 19!), is an incredible set of songs about (what else?) love & loss. The obvious musical reference points are The Orange Juice & Elvis Costello, but there's also something much more pastoral about Aztec Camera, sort of an XTC-ish [2] English countryside vibe.

& the tracks on High Land, Hard Rain contain some of the loveliest acoustic guitar playing I've heard in a long time, particularly in e.g. "We Could Send Letters" & "Lost Outside the Tunnel."

I've only had it for about a day now, but I'm already realizing that it's one of those albums that you listen to both sad & happy, happy knowing that you'll love it forever, & it will never grow old, but sad both because you've missed it for 27 years of your life, & but also because it's just a sad, heartbroken sort of an album.

[2] BTW, speaking of XTC, did anyone see the Chicago auditions for "American Idol"? That first guy, that guy who sang something I can't remember, but then launched into a ridiculously aggressive version of "Making Plans for Nigel"—that just had me dying. He was all like, "Nigel, Nigel, Nigel!".

The equation is broken down into seven variables: (W) weather, (D) debt, (d) monthly salary, (T) time since Christmas, (Q) time since failed quit attempt, (M) low motivational levels and (NA) the need to take action.

Of course, it leaves quite a few questions unanswered:

What about the southern hemisphere, where the temperature in January can be above 100 degrees Fahrenheit?

What about people who celebrate another holiday (or none at all) instead of Christmas?

What if I have no motivation whatsoever, which would cause M to be (presumably) 0, which would cause a division by 0 condition, leading to an infinite amount of... something?

& most importantly: What is the final unit of measurement? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Number of depressed people?

&c.

[3] Not really. But it does tend to numb you after a while, which can be helpful.

January 21, 2006

Two songs I can't get enough of in the past couple of days, & have been listening to somewhat obsessively—through headphones at the office, through my somewhat tinny computer speakers while sitting around at home, through another pair of headphones on my iPod while walking down the street to the grocery store tonight.

I've never really heard any Destroyer before, & really my only context was from a quote from PopMatters' review of last year's Tenement Halls album, which I remembered because I thought it was really funny [2]:

And even if I was a huge Rock*A*Teens fan from back in the day, how many Tenement Halls records would me and my seven fellow fan club members realistically buy? ... So even if Dan Bejar of Destroyer thinks Rock*A*Teens were the bloody Herman's Hermits of North Carolina, that won't do much for someone who's listening to Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells right now.

But so the first time I heard "Rubies"—which song is, btw, 9 and 1/2 minutes long—I was kind of non-committal about it, because it just felt too long & meandering. But then I found myself thinking about it, not in the way that a really catchy track gets stuck in your head, but in this somewhat nagging way that made me want to hear it again.

& so I listened to it again, and now I actually really love it. Bowie-esque intro + incessantly recurring guitar part == very, very fine by me. And then there's my favorite part, at about the four-minute mark, that "... your blues" that almost sounds like it's sighed, rather than sung.

Oddly enough this is another song that I didn't really love at first. Which is, frankly, incredibly odd, because it's one of the most immediately appealing pop singles of 2005 [3] (I was much more into "Models" last year, is my excuse). But "Biology" also almost suffers from multiple personality disorder, & that may be what put me off at first, but is now just why I love it so:

It starts as some sort of bluesy stomp, heavy piano, &c.—and at about a minute in, it turns into this amazing dance pop, all shuffling drums & keyboards, leading up into the shimmering chorus. In fact, I don't know why I'm even bothering to describe it, as this review in Stylus does a much better job:

Beginning like Meg trying to convince Jack White to go to a lap-dance bar with her, it then crashes head-on into light-as-air Europop, the song is about menstruation or pheromones or something, and OH MY GOD THAT CHORUS is exactly how I imagine ascending into Heaven to feel like, floating yet forceful, it nearly snaps your neck with its little finger.

And yes, that's basically it. It's incredible.

[1] Note that the two "listen" links in this post link to The Hype Machine, which is just an awesome resource for finding streamable music along with song reviews on music blogs.

[2] The context for this particular quote being that Dan Bejar (who, as I understand it, basically is Destroyer) wrote the promotional copy for Tenement Halls that appears on the Merge Records site.

[3] And, as luck would have it, it appears on an album that's seen only UK & European release as of yet (Chemistry). I find it absolutely fucking maddening that albums by some of the best current UK pop artists—Sugababes, Rachel Stevens, Girls Aloud, &c.—don't generally get US release.

January 15, 2006

I was looking at my last.fm weekly charts today [1], and it struck me that one of the things I love most about last.fm is that, by recording what I'm listening to, it's essentially a recorder of my moods. Like a lot of people (I assume?), I tend to listen to music that reinforces my moods, so my list of recently played tracks on last.fm tends to be very indicative of how I'm feeling. [2]

I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in twenty-five moves ... If I want to play, say, Blue by Joni Mitchell [3], I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don't really want to go into. Well, you don't know any of that, so you're knackered, really, aren't you? You'd have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting.

[2] And of course, it strikes me that my blog can do much the same thing, on a less granular scale—which is, of course, one of the things I love most about it. To whit: this post and this post, both from this week.

[3] Though, I have to say, I prefer the example in the movie, which was Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide."

Nick Hornby does seem to have some sort of weird Joni Mitchell thing, doesn't he? (c.f. also About a Boy, which has loads of Joni Mitchell references.)

January 13, 2006

I'm so, so impressed & astonished by Cat Power's new album, The Greatest.

After trying to like Cat Power a number of times—5 or 6 years ago, my sister was really into her, and so on & so forth—I'd sort of written her off as a somewhat annoying, ironic-cover-singing, Joni Mitchell-esque [1] folk-bullshit singer.

Which is why I was shocked—shocked!—to listen to her new album and hear... Dusty in Memphis, part II! It's amazing: those Memphis horns, that gorgeous soul guitar & bass, those backing harmonies.

And "The Greatest," with its Moon River-alike strings, may be one of the best songs I've heard in months.

[1] Which, in my book, is really the kicker: I really, really dislike Joni Mitchell, especially that song about the fucking parking lots.

January 11, 2006

I've had this post sitting round for a while but haven't posted it. Sometimes, that happens. But it gave me the chance to add on to it, every week, for the past couple of weeks of episodes! So it's a SuperPost, now.

That tagline on the website: "They sew... she cuts" It's like some cheesy seamstress horror movie!

In the episode a couple of weeks ago, Guadalupe's sketch for her lingerie line (right). Pow! WTF? Most half-assed sketch ever!

At first I liked Diana, because she seemed like a sad little science nerd ("OMG my magnets have lost their polarity!"), but lately she's started to bother me. So tonight was a moment of (double!) vindication.